


Paths of Fire

by Nagaina



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: CW: Consent of a moderately dubious nature, CW: Tentacular plants used in ways nature never intended, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21599203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: Sometimes hate is all it takes to keep a body going.
Relationships: Axel/Marluxia (Kingdom Hearts), Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 2





	Paths of Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a video game prompt community, as follows:
> 
> Marluxia/Axel. PreCoM (which means CoM's sarcastic!Axel, please), preferably something involving hellfire and roses and why Marluxia really, really hates Axel.

_Why?_  
  
_Why…what?_  
  
_Why do I hate him?_  
  
_Oh, my young friend. I must wonder why you’re asking that question of me and not of him…? No, don’t answer. I’m certain your reasons are good ones, or else we wouldn’t be here, having this conversation. Where to begin?_  
  
_Why not…some things are classic for a reason, after all…_  
  
_Once upon a time…_  
  
***  
  
It had become something of a tradition. Once a year, twice, never more than four, he’d come back from wherever he’d been and find it waiting in his Proof, usually somewhere fairly obvious. Usually, it was pretty: a creamy roll of vellum, perfectly scribed and illuminated around the edges in gold leaf and ground lapis, sealed with a ribbon the precise shade of its sender’s hair and a wax medallion scented with some exotic flower essence, or a handmade square of tissue-thin paper elaborately folded into a bloom that unfurled its petals and revealed its message only to an exceedingly careful touch. Not infrequently, it was surrounded by a scattering of seashell pink petals that left their distinctive fragrance all over everything they touched, a scent that lingered for days after he’d finished immolating every other trace of their owner’s presence in his sanctum.  
  
This time, it was sitting dead center in the middle of his bed, a linen-rich square of orchid-white paper sealed in ties of crimson silk, petals spread from foot to headboard and for two feet all around the outside. The invitation was executed in a rigorously elegant poetic form, seventeen syllables exactly, dictating where and when.  
  
He was _never_ going to get the smell out, which was, he supposed, the point.  
  
Axel smoothed down his twitching left eyebrow and went to find Marluxia.  
  
***  
  
_Once upon a time, there was a World as different from this as two worlds could possibly be. It was a world of light and life, a Garden World, one of the many of that kind. Oh, yes, Radiant Garden was by far the greatest of them, and others were larger and more abundant, but this World was as much a paradise in its own way, possessed its own traditions, its own purpose. Radiant Garden was a haven for thinkers and teachers, who lived the life of the mind, whose wisdom had served countless Worlds well over the long years and the reign of its wise and compassionate scholar-kings. Elysia Garden was a refuge for those who chose to serve their Worlds and people more directly, a paradise of healers and those students who came to learn at their feet, to gather the wisdom of life’s preservation and continuance._  
  
_It was ruled, not by a king, but by a prince. But like the kings and potentates of other Worlds – like our own beloved Superior – that prince was tied body and mind, heart and soul, to the Heart of his World, and he reflected its nature as it reflected his. The liege and the land are one, my young friend, as you may have learned in all that eclectic study you’ve done: liege and land are one, the heart of the ruler and the Heart of the World are one, beating in time and existing in harmony, or else the ruler is a pretender and the World is ill-served. You need only look out the window of your sanctum to see this truth: the World That Never Was belongs to Xemnas, and he belongs to it, just as your Proof is your kingdom within that greater demesne. The principle is the same. But I digress…_  
  
_Elysia Garden was ruled by a prince, a healer of all ills, those of the mind, and those of the body, chosen from among many worthy scions by the World-Heart itself. At the hour of his ascension, he felt himself no worthier than any of the others, and in that he was, at least, wise – for he was not worthy, and it was through his own folly that his World was taken, betrayed and devoured and cast into Darkness…_  
  
***  
  
He supposed it was a sort of backhanded blessing that Marluxia tended to enjoy locating these little assignations on out of the way Worlds. Not, of course, that he thought the freak had any shame, or would have cared if any of their colleagues wandered in to work on the place, but because looking for a World that reminded him of _home_ made it much less likely such a thing would happen. Worlds new-born enough to remind the Graceful Assassin of his personal lost paradise were often new enough to lack any native population worth speaking of, and no people meant no fodder for the Heartless, no easy angle of attack and no real point in doing so. If the World and the Organization alike endured the thousands of years necessary to get real people cooked up on a place, _then_ their presence might be a cause for alarm. Otherwise…  
  
The Door opened on a length of black sand beach a half-mile wide, almost perfectly flat and empty as far as the eye could see in any direction. On his left, the ocean rose in high green-blue breakers shot through with foam, surging thunderously against the shore and washing up almost as far as he stood. On his right, an emerald paradise of jungle spread out under the leaden overcast of the sky, broad-leafed trees in thousands of subtle shades of green, festooned in cable-thick vines sporting startlingly vivid tropical flowers, canopy still dripping from a recent rainfall. Beyond the forest, the broad flanks of a mountain rose into the cloud cover, its summit completely obscured but for a decidedly ominous orange glow. A sound not unlike thunder, and not unlike an explosion, echoed down the valley.  
  
Axel stripped off his gloves and knelt, buried his hands in the wet sand and _felt_ it: fire running close beneath the surface, the molten blood of the earth surging through hundreds of miles of basalt-walled veins and capillaries, venting red hot at dozens of different places around the edges of the island. A volcano. The mountain was a volcano, an _erupting_ volcano, and he could feel the throb and pulse of its fiery heart like he’d once been able to feel his own. A smile touched the corners of his mouth.  
  
At least it was going to be _interesting._  
  
***  
  
_When Worlds began falling to the Heartless, and thence into Darkness, Elysia Garden was one of the places that refugees began first appearing, carried there by Corridors both Light and Dark. It was not for nothing that the World was sometimes called the Twilight Sanctuary, for it turned away none who sought safety and healing. The prince and his advisors were disturbed by the stories those first castaways told, for the sages of their people preserved the oldest of tales, the tales of the wars otherwise long forgotten, and so they had some idea of the enemy spreading like a plague among the stars. The prince sent messengers with a warning to those Worlds that he knew of and could reach._  
  
_None of those messengers returned. A warning in itself._  
  
_One by one, the stars began to go out and the people of Elysia Garden, who had not known true danger in many long years, began to remember what it was like to fear the dark. More and more refugees began to arrive, dispossessed and homeless, wounded in body and soul, and soon the tales they told of the Heartless and the deaths of their Worlds spread outside the circle of the prince’s advisors. Frightened, the people sent an emissary to the capital and begged the prince to close the borders of the World, to send the refugees to seek aid elsewhere. The prince was shocked that they should ask such a thing of him, appalled by how quickly their compassion had died, and he admonished them, more harshly than he intended, against cowardice and indifference to the suffering of others, when they still had so much. Then, to show them the way, he laid aside his coronet and put on the simple robes of a healer again, and went among both his people and the refugees to help soothe their fears and ease their pain and bring them together as one people._  
  
_It was in this way that the prince met his doom._  
  
***  
  
Marluxia was cleverer than any two or three other members of the Organization, and he knew exactly how to bait a trap and execute an ambush, even when the prospective victim knew exactly what he was walking into. Axel could admit that easily enough. He could even admire it, and from a relatively close distance, too.  
  
He had not, for example, expected to encounter one of Marluxia’s cleverly set traps at the _lip_ of the volcano’s thrice-damned cauldron. In the jungle? Certainly. _That_ was so predictable, he’d avoided entering the forest completely for as long as possible, skimming along miles of virgin beach and then across miles more of barely-cooled lava field, its obsidian crust so thin every step left a tiny footprint shaped lake of fire behind him. On the far side of the island, a waterfall of white-hot molten rock poured down the lifeless face of the mountain directly into the ocean, raising a column of salt-rich steam that towered thousands of feet into the cloud wrack. He rode the heat-currents up the bare mountain face, pock-marked with the still-steaming vents of old eruptions and perilously balanced deposits of ash and pulverized obsidian, to the very edge of the asymmetrical crater itself. Inside, a lake of magma bubbled noxiously away, working on becoming liquid enough to pour, tiny gas explosions setting off geysers of molten rock that splashed against the walls of the crater and shook loose minor avalanches of basalt and ash from the overhanging lips of stone above. At some point, the volcano had partially collapsed in on itself, resulting in a great deal of not particularly stable rock and compacted ash accumulating around the rim of the caldera, just waiting for something to come along and knock it loose.  
  
Nothing completely human could have survived the temperature where he was standing, much less the relatively total lack of breathable air, which was more sulfurous compounds than oxygen at this altitude, anyway. Nothing remotely animal, mineral, or vegetable should have been able to survive there, either, which is how he excused himself from noticing before the trap was sprung.  
  
He was halfway across the lake, its surface tension more than sufficient to hold him as he ran, when he noticed a ripple forming almost directly in front of him. As he watched, a bud of red-hot…something…not stone…emerged from the molten surface of the lake and unfurled itself. A fern, or something very like it, its tightly folded tendrils unrolling more rapidly than he’d ever thought possible, each leaf and stem exquisitely executed in some impossibly hot, still-living substance, shooting out runners all around him, into the lake, into the caldera walls, digging away at the unstable structure above. He didn’t even have time to turn and run. The lip of the crater gave way with the roar of a thousand avalanches all occurring at once, tens of thousands of tons of stone and ash and pulverized volcanic glass crashing down over top of him and into the magma lake, raising a wave of molten stone that swamped him under in less than an eye blink and forced him to dive deeper unless he wanted to be ejected over the edge and into the ocean below.  
  
Immune to any fire less than his own – and his own was the heat at the heart of stars on his best days – he’d dived, and found himself caught in the subdermal volcanic rip-tide of currents, sucked into a vent and dragged miles beneath the surface of the island before he’d much of a chance to think. In time, the ride slowed as the liquid stone started thickening into something much more solid, solid enough that he could reach out and catch at it, find a sharp, hot handhold to stop his forward momentum. The roof of the tube, thankfully, and it was thin and brittle enough that it gave to a few swift blows from a hurriedly summoned chakram. He popped up out of the aperture he’d made gasping for breath because, while he didn’t technically need to breathe, he’d gotten used to doing so for the comfort of it. He had obsidian trying to crystallize on his eyelashes, much to his annoyance. The Organization standard uniform was not the sort of thing one wanted to wear as protective gear while snorkeling in a live volcano – his bare skin had come through better than the clothes, which objected to light and heat in such concentrations and rapidly crumbled off, ash and black smoke.  
  
The jungle loomed before him as he half-staggered, half-crawled off the lava field, green and dark and fragrant. He wanted, very much, to burn it all down.  
  
***  
  
_The word of Radiant Garden’s destruction came with a new wave of refugees and, after that, the floodgates truly opened. Elysia Garden was, in truth, nearly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers. The prince stood firm in his conviction to turn no one away, particularly in such dark times, and he opened the palace for use as a hospital and shelter for the dispossessed and, through his example, prevailed upon his kin and people to do likewise. It was not comfortable, nor was it easy, but it was necessary, and so it was done well if not ungrudgingly._  
  
_One of the refugees brought to the palace for care was a warrior from another world, weary from many battles and sorely wounded in spirit if not flesh, or so the prince was told. The warrior had arrived with a band of refugees for whom he had acted as protector, though they were not of the same World, and he was like none that the prince had ever before seen. He was tall and slender as a blade and his flesh bore the scars of many battles and his face the marks of one who had no more tears left to weep and before him every flame genuflected as to a king._  
  
_I see you know who I mean._  
  
_He would not speak of where he came from, or how his World came to die, and the prince sensed a deep and soul-killing grief in his silence. He would not speak of himself, or who he had been before his fate was cast to the wind, but he offered his aid in protecting Elysia Garden with eyes cast down and the prince sensed in his humility an undercurrent of shame and sorrow and self-loathing. The prince accepted the warrior’s aid in the hope that such service would help heal him of the pain he carried, not knowing that pain was an illusion, a mask of sorrow drawn over emptiness._  
  
_He has always been a gifted actor, you see._  
  
***  
  
“Marluxia? I _know_ you’re there. I can _smell_ you – even in the middle of all _this_…stuff. _I’m_ not allergic to you.”  
  
It was raining, a warm, steady rain that drummed on the canopy and trickled down to the jungle floor in fragrant droplets scented by every flower they fell through, perfume almost strong enough to choke him. In a way, it was worse than the hellish fumes of the volcano – sulfur dioxide wasn’t _supposed_ to smell good, after all. Down here, under the trees, the air was thick with the humidity and layer upon layer of sweet, sultry, _living_ smells, flowers and loam and decay, rich and cloying and _profoundly_ irritating for some reason. His eyes, which hadn’t minded being bathed in molten rock, were trying to _water_, for Nothing’s sake.  
  
“Marluxia, I’m serious. I didn’t come here to play with you this time – we need to _talk_. I – “ His throat was closing. He realized it with a sensation close to shock. His throat was closing, and his head was starting to spin, and little black dots were starting to dance in front of his eyes, and it felt like something was _crawling_ across his skin.  
  
Ash. He wasn’t covered in ash, he realized distantly, as he watched tiny black tendrils sprout off his skin, growing stems and leaves and runners with unnatural rapidity, sinking past the barrier of his skin and swallowing up his effort to call fire and using his own strength to grow and grow and grow. It wasn’t ash. Seeds. Millions of tiny seeds. That ate _fire_.  
  
“Oh, you _bastard,_” Axel whispered, half-admiringly, as leaves obscured his vision and questing tendrils cinched his arms and legs together and the darkness swallowed the last of his conscious mind.  
  
***  
  
_The warrior made himself useful at once and, in truth, the prince came to rely greatly upon him for advise and aid of a martial nature. Elysia Garden had few warriors of its own, for its people had long abided in peace, and fewer still who possessed the inclination and aptitude for war. The warrior sought, and received, permission to recruit assistants from among the people of the Garden and from the refugee population, as well. The warrior set about forging them into a force capable of protecting the Garden from the Heartless, should they come, or so the prince believed._  
  
_But the warrior’s heart was not healed by his endeavors, and this the prince saw, as well. The prince did not know that the warrior had no heart to heal – he sensed the terrible barrenness within his new friend, but thought it a hollow carved by the enormity of his loss, the secret pain that he would share with no one. The illusion of sorrow, of a wound that would not mend by itself, gradually drew the prince in, as it was meant to._  
  
_Some griefs, after all, can only be healed by one thing._  
  
_They became lovers, the prince and the warrior, and until the prince lay in those arms, he had not realized how lonely he was, how heavily the burden of his responsibilities had lain on his shoulders, how much he had needed the loving touch of another. It was the chink in the armor of his duty, the treacherous weakness in his heart and soul, the one…little…flaw. He needed the love of another to continue on beneath the crushing weight of his duty, to his World and to the people that came seeking shelter on it, another set of shoulders to help bear that weight aloft._  
  
_And the one he chose to help bear it was a cold-blooded monstrosity sent to destroy his World and give it to the Heartless._  
  
_Irony._  
  
***  
  
It was dark, fully and completely dark, by the time Axel regained something resembling consciousness. He became aware of himself again by slow degrees, his thoughts thick and sluggish, disconnected from each other and from his body, which hardly felt _there_ at all. Enervated. He felt utterly enervated, drained to the dregs, and he wasn’t entirely sure why he was even still alive. It took everything he had in him to force his eyes open.  
  
Marluxia lounged naked in a throne woven of flowering vines and broad-leafed palm fronds not an arm’s length away, bathed in the warm tropical rain and the golden light of a dozen tightly furled fire buds, looking down on him with a smile gracing his mouth and an unreadable expression in his dark, dark eyes. Bound. He was bound down at Marluxia’s feet by those same damned plants, glowing lambently golden against his ash-pale skin, too weak to even move, much less spit, struggle, or call a weapon and spike the bastard in the face, as he so richly deserved. He should probably be maddened with something like frustration, but he couldn’t quite work up the energy. Or even the memory of how to _be _frustrated, which was much, much worse. That sensation knotting his belly up, however, was most definitely fear.  
  
Marluxia saw it, and the smile deepened. “Axel. You look…absolutely terrible. Did you enjoy my surprise?”  
  
It took him a moment to manage sarcasm. “Well. You…won one. Congratulations.”  
  
The Graceful Assassin rose, his throne unweaving itself as he did so, fiery vines and their accompanying buds rearranging themselves around the trees, adjusting the tension on Axel’s bound limbs and body, heaving him half upright, cradling his impossibly heavy head and holding his neck straight by virtue of nearly throttling him. Little black spots danced in front of his vision again, momentarily, chased away by the warm -- warm! -- caress of Marluxia’s hands on his face. Marluxia was warmer than he was. Marluxia’s damned plants were warmer than he was – hot enough to hurt, to make the skin beneath where they lay prickle and tighten and burn. He wanted to scream more than he wanted to get loose and strangle that smug look off the bastard’s face.  
  
“It is called,” the Graceful Assassin murmured against his cold lips, “Kupala’s fire-flower, and it only appears, much less blooms, under very, very specific conditions. I was exceedingly fortunate to obtain the seedling I did – a World died to create it, and it took me quite a long time to find another World capable of nurturing it until now. Do you remember what tonight is, Flurry of Dancing Flames?”  
  
Axel closed his eyes, if only to escape the look in Marluxia’s own. “Marluxia. Why don’t we just pretend that I’m sorry? And then you can pretend to forgive me. And then I’ll pretend to be very impressed by…whatever you want me to be impressed with. It’ll be like old times.”  
  
“Oh, no.” A whisper. A hand fisted in his hair, forced his head back, his eyes open. “We are long past the point of false sorrow and false forgiveness. Tonight…you pay every debt you owe me. And beyond that…? We shall see.”  
  
***  
  
_Elysia Garden fell, of course. The warrior betrayed the prince to whom he had sworn service and loyalty and whispered false words of love and eternal devotion. Elysia Garden fell, and its people, natives and refugees alike, were hunted through the streets and forests, hunted until there was not one left who could call his heart his own. Its Heart was broken open and devoured by Darkness._  
  
_The warrior held the prince as a lover might when the Heartless came for him. The warrior held him down and watched as his heart was torn away, held him as he writhed and screamed and the hollow remnant of what was left came to life and begged for destruction. Instead, the warrior picked up the cold and empty shell of the prince and carried him away from the broken bits and pieces of his World._  
  
_Some might call that mercy._  
  
_What do you say, Key of Destiny?_  
  
***  
  
Brutality might have been easier to endure. Axel was, if not accustomed to being used, at least indifferent to the physical unpleasantness of it. After being forcibly deprived of one’s heart, no other violation seemed quite so terrible.  
  
This wasn’t a violation.  
  
Marluxia touched him, and it was all he could do not to moan. Warm hands on his face, on his throat, on the flat planes of his chest. Lips caught at his nipples, the warm tip of his tongue urged them to hardness, and teeth bit down, sending a mingled jolt of pain and sudden, red-hot desire through him. It was just that, just that little thing, and suddenly he was utterly inflamed, like a switch had been flicked somewhere inside him. Marluxia’s mouth continued its way down his chest, over his belly, paused for a moment to dip into his navel, studiously ignored the erection his attentions had provoked. He bit down on the inside of his lip, the taste of his own blood spreading across his tongue, and somehow that was unbelievably erotic, too.  
  
The hands and mouth disappeared as his tormentor moved. Crossed around behind him. Marluxia knelt between his legs, cupped him in both hands and spread him open, laved him with a tongue both hot and rough. The vines held his immobile body to receive their master’s attentions at just the right angle, strangulation-tight around his throat, arms hyper-extended and locked from wrist to shoulder, languidly draped otherwise, on his knees with his legs parted just enough to allow access. Marluxia’s elegantly long-fingered hands kneaded his ass, stroked down the backs of his thighs, and his tongue did things that made him want to beg, for more, to make it stop. He couldn’t move, and every inch of his body ached with lust, shook with hunger. Finally, after a short eternity of pure sensual torment, Marluxia pulled away.  
  
“Are you enjoying yourself?” An unmistakable note of malicious pleasure in that silken voice. “You should be. The pollen of the fire-flower is one of the most potent aphrodisiacs in any of the Worlds. It could make a stone want to beg for release, much less a creature of fire like yourself.”  
  
“You --” He choked out, around the need to scream for just that. “You bastard – you – “  
  
A throaty laugh. Another long stroke of tongue. A whisper-soft rustle of foliage and the cool caress feather-soft leaves against his skin, cupping his balls in fronds as agile as a human hand, wrapping his length in slender filaments that milked him just as deftly. He bit through his tongue holding back a cry. Petals trailed down his spine, long, tightly furled buds clinging to a thicker vine, snaking down from above, sliding between his legs and…in. Soft, spreading open inside him in response to the warmth of his body, spilling…something…slick and wet that dripped down his thighs as it withdrew.  
  
“Marluxia,” He whispered, forced himself to whisper and not shriek, “Marluxia, please --“  
  
“Please…what?” Oh, he was enjoying this far, far too much. “Please stop? Please take me now? Axel?”  
  
“Please…stop.” He didn’t know where he found to strength, the will he needed to say that, when all he wanted was to be fucked completely limp and senseless. “I – can’t – I – “  
  
“Oh, Axel.” Marluxia rose, slid against him, let him feel that he wasn’t the only one who wanted. “I’m so sorry but…no. I won’t be stopping. But I promise I won’t mind if you call me Roxas.”  
  
And so that was what Axel did.  
  
***

_In any descent World, it would have been the small hours of the morning. The corridors of the Castle That Never Was were, thankfully, all-but deserted, only Dusks flitting and writhing about their assigned tasks as the Key of Destiny made his way back to his sanctum. At the threshold of his Proof, he paused, a beaten slump to his shoulders, and rested his head against its frame for a long moment. He turned back, ascended a level, and came to a door not his own, that opened at his touch._  
  
_“Axel – “ He began and only reflexes honed to the finest edge threw him out of the way in time to avoid the gout of white-hot flame that surged out to meet him._  
  
_They died away quickly enough. Axel couldn’t burn that hot for that long without risking the integrity of his own being. Roxas dismissed the weapons he had involuntarily summoned and went back to the door, poking his head around the edge carefully._  
  
_The Flurry of Dancing Flames knelt naked in the middle of his Proof, face tilted toward the floor, shoulders slumped, radiating weariness deeper than mere physical exhaustion. Nothing else was left, not even a drift of ash, walls and floor and even the windows heat blackened and cracked. Slowly, almost against his will, Roxas advanced a tentative step towards him._  
  
_Axel lifted his head and smiled, a smile with nothing of pleasure or mirth or comfort behind it. “I’m sorry. Some things need to be cleansed with fire.” Roxas said nothing, and came no closer, hesitant for the first time he could remember. “Roxas…there’s…something I need to tell you.”_


End file.
